Fake news emerged from the tradition of yellow journalism of the 1890s, which can be described as a reliance on the familiar aspects of sensationalism-crime news, scandal and gossip, divorces and sex, and stress upon the reporting of disasters, sports sensationalism as well as possibly satirical news. The paper ends with the Conclusion and recommendations.Īlthough fake news has received increased attention recently, the term has been used by scholars for many years. Following this, the findings of the review are reported, first in terms of descriptive statistics and the in terms of a thematic analysis of the identified studies. Thereafter, the SLR research approach is discussed. The next section provides background information on fake news, its importance in the day-to-day lives of social media users and how information literacy and critical thinking can be used to identify fake news. This work was performed by means of a systematic literature review (SLR). The purpose of this study is to investigate the use of critical thinking methods to detect news stories that are untrue or otherwise help to develop a critical attitude to online news. The spread of fake news can cause a multitude of damages to the subject varying from reputational damage of an individual, to having an effect on the perceived value of a company. While social media platforms and search engines do not encourage people to believe the information being circulated, they are complicit in people’s propensity to believe the information they come across on these platforms, without determining their validity. This means that any person who is in possession of a device, which can connect to the internet, is potentially a consumer or distributor of fake news. Social media continues to contribute to the increasing distribution of user-generated information this includes hoaxes, false claims, fabricated news and conspiracy theories, with primary sources being social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. While social media is a convenient way of accessing news and staying connected to friends and family, it is not easy to distinguish real news from fake news on social media. Posts on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter spread rapidly due to how they attempt to grab the readers’ attention as quickly as possible, with little substantive information provided, and thus create a breeding ground for the dissemination of fake news. Twitter comes second to Facebook, with over 400 million active users per month. With over 1.8 billion active users per month in 2016, Facebook accounted for 20% of total traffic to reliable websites and up to 50% of all the traffic to fake news sites. The variety of information sources that we have today has contributed to the spread of alternative facts. People no longer rely on television and print media alone for obtaining news, but increasingly make use of social media and news apps. The information age has brought a significant increase in available sources of information this is in line with the unparalleled increase in internet availability and connection, in addition to the accessibility of technological devices. The recommendation of these studies was that information literacy be included in academic institutions, specifically to encourage critical thinking.
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The studies on critical thinking noted critical thinking as an essential skill for identifying fake news. Although some of these studies referred to information literacy, only three explicitly dealt with critical thinking as a means to identify fake news. During the SLR’s sifting process, 22 relevant studies were identified.
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A systematic literature review (SLR) has been performed to identify previous studies on evaluating the credibility of news, and in particular to see what has been done in terms of the use of critical thinking to evaluate online news. The purpose of this study is to investigate the current state of knowledge on the use of critical thinking to identify fake news. Critical thinking, as a form of information literacy, provides a means to critically engage with online content, for example by looking for evidence to support claims and by evaluating the plausibility of arguments.
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While there are many studies involving fake news and tools on how to detect it, there is a limited amount of work that focuses on the use of information literacy to assist people to critically access online information and news. With the large amount of news currently being published online, the ability to evaluate the credibility of online news has become essential.